The Colors of the Rain
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About this ebook
Ten-year-old Paulie Sanders hates his name because it also belonged to his daddy-his daddy who killed a fellow white man and then crashed his car. With his mama unable to cope, Paulie and his sister, Charlie, move in with their Aunt Bee and attend a new elementary school. But it's 1972, and this new school puts them right in the middle of the Houston School District's war on desegregation.
Paulie soon begins to question everything. He hears his daddy's crime was a race-related one; he killed a white man defending a black man, and when Paulie starts picking fights with a black boy at school, he must face his reasons for doing so. When dark family secrets are revealed, the way forward for everyone will change the way Paulie thinks about family forever.
The Colors of the Rain is an authentic, heartbreaking portrait of loss and human connection during an era fraught with racial tension set in verse from debut author R. L. Toalson.
R. L. Toalson
R.L. Toalson grew up running wild through corn rows and cow-grazing fields and recording true and wildly exaggerated false tales to entertain her friends, family members, and anyone who would listen. She still runs (literally) wild through the streets of her city and spends most of her days recording true (if a little exaggerated) and false tales to entertain anyone who will listen. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her one brilliant husband, six delightful children, and two arrogant cats. She’s the author of The Colors of the Rain, which won the Arnold Adoff Poetry Honor Award for New Voices in 2020; The Woods, which received a starred review from Booklist; and the highly acclaimed The First Magnificent Summer. Visit her at RachelToalson.com.
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The Colors of the Rain - R. L. Toalson
SPRING 1972
RAIN
Most nights
I sleep just fine
because most nights
it doesn’t rain.
The last time it rained like this
we drove past that curve
Gran always called dangerous
and saw lights flashing red and blue
and people walking around
and a body covered
with a white sheet
that glowed in the dark.
Mama didn’t slow down long enough
to look at the twisted car.
It was too dark to see, anyhow.
We didn’t know who was
under the sheet, but Mama said
a prayer for their family
as we drove on by.
EARTH
Granddad came over last month
and planted cabbage, yellow squash,
peppers, and okra
in the little square of dirt
my daddy marked.
Me and Charlie
tried to tell him
we don’t like cabbage
or yellow squash or peppers.
We didn’t mention the okra,
on account of Gran’s fried okra,
which is the best fried okra
you’ve ever tasted.
Granddad said those are
the only vegetables
that will grow in a Texas garden
this time of year.
He said, You never know
when you’ll need
something to eat,
and he just kept digging
with his pale, spotted hands.
Granddad says
things like that
all the time.
Mama says he lived
through the Great Depression,
back when a whole lot of people
went hungry.
I watched him
the whole time he planted.
He looked a lot
like my daddy,
long legs folded up,
head bent so I couldn’t see
the white of his hair,
overalls pulled tight
across his back.
He touched the earth
like it was alive.
NIGHT
The night my daddy left us,
after we drove past
that dangerous curve
and thought it had
nothing to do with us,
a black sky dropped
cold-water blankets
on me and Charlie
and Mama
while we stood
in the dark
trying to understand
what those flashing lights meant.
I didn’t sleep
for twenty-seven hours.
BIRTHDAY
My aunt Bee
calls me Paulie,
no matter how many times
I tell her I’m too old
for that nickname.
John Paul Sanders, Jr.,
is my real name,
but Paulie is what
she’d called my daddy.
Tonight, she’s brought us supper,
since it’s Saturday,
and Mama works late
waiting tables at a diner in town.
She spreads it all out on the table—
greasy chicken and
mashed potatoes and
rolls so buttery
they leave gray rings
on the white bag.
She tears off the receipt
with today’s date,
April 16, 1972,
Mama’s birthday.
She missed the Apollo 16 launch,
just like she’s missing supper.
Aunt Bee knows
Mama won’t be home
until later. She says,
Go on, then, and I dig in.
Milo sits underneath the table,
his long pink tongue hanging out,
ears cocked toward Aunt Bee.
She doesn’t like it when
we feed him with food
from our table.
She says it spoils dogs.
I slip him a roll anyway.
A chocolate cake waits for Mama
in the icebox.
DIVORCE
Aunt Bee’s husband divorced her
a long time ago,
so she comes to see us a lot.
Sometimes she washes dishes
and sometimes she
sorts the clothes.
Most of the time,
she brings us suppers
she didn’t cook.
When I asked,
Mama said that
Aunt Bee’s husband
didn’t divorce her
on account of
her not knowing
how to cook.
CHARLIE
Charlie’s hung some lights
on the walls of the family room.
Mama won’t like the holes,
but even I think the lights
are pretty.
Every other minute,
Charlie looks at the clock,
her white face glowing
red and then blue in the lights.
Shouldn’t she be here
by now? she says.
She only works ’til seven.
Her voice shakes a little,
and I feel it shake my chest.
Once a parent leaves,
you wonder if it might
happen again.
She’ll be here soon, Charlotte,
Aunt Bee says.
Mama says Charlie’s
a terrible nickname for a girl.
I think it fits her just fine,
since Charlie’s the only girl
I know who climbs trees
higher than me and
drives Granddad’s tractor
and swims in a dirty pond
full of snakes.
Aunt Bee puts her arm
around Charlie,
and even though she’s twelve,
Charlie looks real small.
Aunt Bee smiles at me.
You’ll lead the song? she says.
She’s asked me once already.
I think she’s just trying
to fill the space where
Mama should be by now.
SING
My daddy used to sing all the time.
Mama called it loud and obnoxious,
but me and Charlie
loved to hear him sing.
He’d sing in the morning
when he turned on our light
to wake us up for school,
and sometimes he’d sing in the evening
when he turned it off.
He was a good daddy
on the nights he sang.
I try not to think about
the nights he didn’t.
Your daddy had a
one-of-a-kind voice,
Aunt Bee says. Lucky he
passed it on to you.
She whispers the last words
like it’s something great to sing
like my daddy.
He was in a band once.
That’s how Mama met him.
He used to tell us the story
back when we all
ate supper together,
how she showed up
the night his band
was playing at a bar
and he fell in love
as soon as he saw her.
He’d always wink at Mama
when he said that.
FIGHT
I do know
my daddy liked bars
too much.
He was in a bar the night he left.
I heard Mama tell Aunt Bee
he was so drunk
he beat a man to death.
The man’s friends chased him
around that wet, dangerous curve.
And when his car left the road,
they shot him,
right in the heart, three times.
I guess they wanted to make sure
he didn’t get back up.
I wasn’t supposed to
hear this, of course.
But nobody ever tells
me and Charlie anything,
so we’ve learned to listen
real good in doorways.
I never did hear why
my daddy fought in the
first place. I sure would
like to know that.
RUN
Mama walks through the door then,
so I don’t have to
think about it anymore.
I break into song,
with the voice of my daddy,
and I’m halfway finished,
almost to her name,
before I realize no one else
is singing. Charlie’s crying
on the couch and
Aunt Bee’s walking Mama
to the chair right beside
my daddy’s old one.
No one sits in
my daddy’s chair anymore.
Mama’s black eyes are shiny
and her face is red.
She leans her head
back against the chair.
Her brown hair’s stuck in strings
across her cheeks.
Paulie, why don’t you
go get your mama something
to drink? Aunt Bee says,
and Charlie makes a noise
that squeezes my chest.
Aunt Bee eyes Charlie,
then looks back at me.
But I can only see Mama,
looking like my daddy used to look
right before he turned mean and wild,
and I bolt from the house,
like it’s a reflex,
door slamming behind me.
It’s almost dark.
Mama doesn’t let me
go out after dark.
But I just run.
Paulie! Aunt Bee shouts
from the porch.
I feel warm all over,
even though it’s cool out here,
since spring only just began,
and I stop only to turn around
and yell, I’m not Paulie anymore!
I head toward the woods,
Milo’s four legs keeping time
behind me.
She’ll leave,
she’ll leave,
she’ll leave,
my feet say,
over and over and over.
I try to outrun
all the words
my feet say.
SHOTS
The day my daddy left for good,
we sat on our porch,
waiting for him
to come home
like he always did.
We watched for his
electric-blue Fairlane with
rusted-out doors
and a droopy ceiling,
and we listened for its tires
popping over gravel.
I played with Milo that day,
throwing a ball he’d
always bring back,
and Charlie rocked in the
chair Granddad made her,
and we tried not to notice
the sun setting.
The sky caught fire
and started fading,
like it knew what was coming
and wanted to get away.
And then all those clouds
rolled in real soft and quiet,
without warning,
and before we knew it,
everything around us
turned black and wet.
Mama packed us
in Gran’s car and
took us looking,
even though she always
did the looking by herself.
Maybe she knew
what was coming, too.
Flashing lights were
coloring our driveway
when Mama pulled back in.
I’ve never seen Gran
and Granddad run
across the street
like they did that night,
Gran in her nightgown,
shaking in the rain,
shouting for her boy.
Granddad pulled her,
dripping, to the porch
and held her while
a different rain fell.
Mama stood alone.
I’d heard the shots,
right after the sky
opened up.
Mama says that can’t be,
seeing as it happened
a whole nine miles
from our house.
But I did.
SCHOOL
Me and Charlie
went to school
four days after that,
on Friday, spelling-test day.
That week we only had
nine words instead of
the usual ten.
We’ve never had only
nine words.
I hate the number nine.
It means something
I don’t understand.
Nine miles left,
almost home,
and then gone.
When I numbered my test,
before my teacher
called out the words,
this is what I wrote:
1. My
2. Daddy
3. Isn’t
4. Coming
5. Home.
6. He
7. Is
8. Forever
9. GONE.
I know it was wrong,
but they were the
only words my hand would write.
The day after that,
Mama pulled me and
Charlie out of school,
on account of our
mental trauma.
She didn’t say we had no
car anymore.
I think she was ashamed
of that part.
EYES
Daddy called his car
My Fair Lady.
Mama never had a car.
Gran told Mama